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Babette Mangolte: The Camera: Je, or La Caméra: I

Get behind Mangolte's camera in this groundbreaking film, followed by a discussion

Babette Mangolte emerged as a key figure in New York’s 1970s avant garde art, film and performance scenes, and is celebrated equally for her work as a filmmaker, photographer and cinematographer. For over four decades, her practice has addressed complex questions about the act of looking.

In The Camera: Je, or La Caméra: I, viewers can experience the act of shooting photographs from the photographer’s perspective. Using a technique called the ‘subjective camera’, Mangolte invites the viewer behind the camera to witness the artist’s process and the power relations at play. The film is structured in three parts: studio photography, street photography and a final section in which the images produced are reviewed.

About Babette Mangolte

Babette Mangolte (b.1941, France) is a French-American artist working in film, video, photography and installation. She was one of the first women admitted to the Louis Lumière-founded National School of Photography and Cinematography in Paris, and has since made seven feature-length films and a number of non-narrative short films exploring movement, landscape, subjectivity and the acts of looking and image-making. Mangolte emerged as a key figure in New York’s 1970s avant garde art, film and performance scenes. In addition to her own works, she has served as cinematographer for artists including Chantal Akerman, Joan Jonas, Yvonne Rainer and Michael Snow, filmed and photographed significant performances by artists Trisha Brown, Robert Morris, and Marina Abramović and documented exhibitions by Robert Rauschenberg. Recent solo exhibitions include Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna (2016) and VOX centre de l’image contemporaine, Montreal (2013). Mangolte is currently a professor at the University of California, San Diego.